Raoul Wallenberg Biography: Part VI

Please note:

• Read Part 5.

• Originally, today’s send-out was planned to be the final one. The last part will go out on Sunday.

• The section below includes sensitive content from the Holocaust.

The Final Solution

“Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews….If it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed.”¹

– Anne Frank, October 9, 1942

Hitler had given the order for the attack on Poland to be done “with the greatest brutality and without mercy.”² He further said that he had given the Einsatzgruppen, a killing unit outside of the Army, "the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need."³ The Nazis had always accepted using violence when needed, but they were taking an increasingly vicious approach to dealing with people labeled as enemies.

After five weeks of intense battles, the Nazis took over Poland on October 6. Britain and France never entered the fight, even though they had declared war on Germany.

The victory and occupation achieved the goal of more “living space” for Germany. But the territory also introduced a new complication. Poland’s annexation placed over three million Jewish people under Nazi control. This was six times the number of Jews who had lived in Germany when Hitler first came to power. This influx created a problem the Nazis had not fully anticipated.

While persecution made life harsh and painful, and at times violent, the Nazis, for the most part, had been intent on removing Jewish people from German society through emigration. But by this point in time, that strategy had become nearly impossible. Countries were taking in only small numbers of refugees. And after the Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine, the British government set a strict quota of 75,000 Jewish people in total to that region over five years until 1944.

Without emigration as a viable option, the Nazis began moving Jewish people into walled-off ghettos. The biggest of these by population would be the one in Warsaw. Nearly 450,000 Jewish people moved into an area of just over one square mile. Immense suffering here became the norm. As one survivor recalled,